What is your moral philosophy?

[Ren]

Relativism doesn't prevent improvement since improvement itself is relative.

I think these are two different senses of "relative". Moral relativism is a kind of subjectivism.

Scientific improvements in the sense wolly means are probably objective insofar as things like medical progress etc. are objective improvements.

However I think it's a false equivalency on wolly's part to conflate moral improvement with scientific improvement. Will try to explain later.

 

[John K]

Would you say that for you, faith ultimately comes prior to morals?

Are there certain moral stances of the Catholic Church that go against your morals, or do you take in Christian morality as a whole?

It seems to me that there are many issues with Christian morality from the perspective of a humanist committed to human freedom. I would be interested to know what your particular take on this is.

Ren, I'm not sure how to answer this here without risking misunderstanding, and maybe taking us way outside the scope of your thread, but I'll try.

Like any other knowledge of the world, our moral education can only come ultimately from our own individual experience of the (inner and outer) world over time, moderated by our thinking and feeling processes. The experience is the prior condition, because without it there is no starting point or validation. Now in the same way that I don't have the innate ability to create my own comprehensive physics theory of the world and have to rely extensively on centuries of experimentation, observation and theory as a basis for my knowledge in this field, so also with morals. Part of my life experience is to adopt an established perspective (just like in physics), rather than trying to develop something by myself from first principles. In physics, I don't accept anything uncritically (for example, I suspect string theory as it is presented in popular accounts is bollocks) - nor do I accept everything uncritically that is supplied by the Catholic Church. But it has been around for nearly 2000 years and provides me with the foundations for my religious and ethical life in the same way that physics does for my scientific background. Another analogy - we all have to live somewhere and I live in a medium sized town. There are things about my town that suit me and some that don't, but that's just life - I embrace the good bits and avoid the bad bits and we get on fine. Don't get me wrong - I'm not talking just about flaws necessarily, god bless the differences between us all. There are things in my town that don't interest me or even turn me off, but are really valuable to others - and so it should be. That's a bit like my attitude to the Church.

The hardest part of your questions to answer relates to faith, and that is where we could get badly diverted. People treat faith quite illogically. So - I have never been to Australia and I only have the word of other people that it exists: it is an act of faith on my part that there is such a place with given characteristics, but that raises no eyebrows. You can argue that all I have to do is get on a plane and go there, but what about all the other places on earth that I've never been to, or the dark side of the Moon. And is it not an act of faith that there was a yesterday. Or can you prove to me conclusively that the Higgs boson exists - I don't mean to an expert, I mean to me in all my ignorance ….. most of our knowledge of the world comes from this sort of faith, faith in what others with expertise or direct experience tell us, not from actual experience of our own, or experimental proof conclusive to each of us individually. So it is with religious or philosophical knowledge - we rely extensively on the word of people who have had certain experiences, been to "places" that most of us don't or can't get to, thought about and processed it with faculties and expertise that we don't have access to, then told us about it.

A step back from these thoughts is my own relationship with God, which is my existential starting point. This is based on awareness and experience rather than religious faith as it is commonly understood - books on Christian mysticism such as The Cloud of Unknowing (my favourite), or Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle give some idea of this sort of experience - though what they describe is like the Atlantic Ocean compared to my own small lake.

Catholic Christianity is a good place for me because
(1) It embraces clear logical and comprehensive thinking to the Nth degree that I can refer to when needed and it's liturgy has a weekly and annual rhythm to it that keeps me supported and engaged, even when I've run dry; but
(2) At the same time it has a profound depth of mysticism that rivals anything on earth. Mystical experience with no grounding can spin off into never-never land.

But I'd never simply adopt the whole package without the same critical appraisal (both T and F judgement) that I give anything else in life.

(And, quite illogically, it does appeal to me enormously to belong to perhaps the oldest organisation on earth in continuous existence :biggrin

 

[sprinkles]

I think these are two different senses of "relative". Moral relativism is a kind of subjectivism.

Scientific improvements in the sense wolly means are probably objective insofar as things like medical progress etc. are objective improvements.

However I think it's a false equivalency on wolly's part to conflate moral improvement with scientific improvement. Will try to explain later.

Improvement is predicated on the concept that the improved thing is better than the old thing, and "better" is dependent on distinguishing conscious desires, such as not wanting to be sick or not wanting to die. This is really an is-ought problem.

 

[Ren]

Improvement is predicated on the concept that the improved thing is better than the old thing, and "better" is dependent on distinguishing conscious desires, such as not wanting to be sick or not wanting to die. This is really an is-ought problem.

I don't agree. Let's take another example. You purchase two different chairs. One of them breaks after you sit on it for the first time. "That chair is of a bad quality", you might say. Sitting on the other chair and noticing that it doesn't break, you might say: "That chair is of a better quality."

You might have used "not sturdy" and "sturdy" as substitutes for "bad" and "better" here.

It should be obvious here that there is nothing subjective or relative about the use of the term "better" in the instance above. This is not how the term is used in that instance. I think insisting that the use of such a term is connected to some conscious desire of not wanting to fall to the ground would land you in absurdities. It isn't an is-ought problem.

But devilish @wolly.green would like to suggest that the "better" in moral propositions is of the same objective nature as the one above. Sinner

 

[sprinkles]

I don't agree. Let's take another example. You purchase two different chairs. One of them breaks after you sit on it for the first time. "That chair is of a bad quality", you might say. Sitting on the other chair and noticing that it doesn't break, you might say: "That chair is of a better quality."

You might have used "not sturdy" and "sturdy" as substitutes for "bad" and "better" here.

It should be obvious here that there is nothing subjective or relative about the use of the term "better" in the instance above. This is not how the term is used in that instance. I think insisting that the use of such a term is connected to some conscious desire of not wanting to fall to the ground would land you in absurdities. It isn't an is-ought problem.

But devilish @wolly.green would like to suggest that the "better" in moral propositions is of the same objective nature as the one above. Sinner

If for some reason it doesn't matter to you that the chair breaks, then the one that doesn't break isn't really better. It is just different.

Not to mention that you might just be really heavy.

Or the chair is a 5000 year old antique.

 

[Ren]

Not to mention that you might just be really heavy.

Okay, well then we respectfully disagree? And by the way, I'm not that big!

 

[sprinkles]

Okay, well then we respectfully disagree? And by the way, I'm not that big!

It's funny but it makes a difference. It's like how people leave bad reviews for things simply because they used it wrong, or managed to destroy it. It's possible that your chair isn't even really a chair.

 

[Wyote]

It's possible that your chair isn't even really a chair.

You might have used "not sturdy" and "sturdy" as substitutes for "bad" and "better" here.

 

[Ren]

Enneagram 9 in action!

But don't worry, sprinkles and I have forged a kind of strange relationship through bickering over the months.

 

[sprinkles]

Enneagram 9 in action!

But don't worry, sprinkles and I have forged a kind of strange relationship through bickering over the months.

I don't remember any bickering.

 

[Wyote]

Enneagram 9 in action!

YOU DON'T KNOW ME

 

[Ren]

I don't remember any bickering.

Well I remember. :hulk:



Anyway, regarding your point about the chair. Do you mean that perhaps the chair doesn't exist, and my experience of sitting on the chair is a mere illusion? My lead would be to say that this doesn't change the fact that "better" is not always used in a moral sense. I would still have the illusion of the chair being "bad", and the fact that I can report on this fact illustrates the existence of a form of badness that isn't moral.

Put differently: if a particular instance of word use is not within an ethical register, a metaphysical argument about the situation of that use won't suddenly make it ethical. It will do nothing for the instance of use because the matter in question is not an metaphysical matter. Neither is it an ethical matter - or so I contend.

 

[sprinkles]

Well I remember. :hulk:



Anyway, regarding your point about the chair. Do you mean that perhaps the chair doesn't exist, and my experience of sitting on the chair is a mere illusion? My lead would be to say that this doesn't change the fact that "better" is not always used in a moral sense. I would still have the illusion of the chair being "bad", and the fact that I can report on this fact illustrates the existence of a form of badness that isn't moral.

I mean one might be mistaken about what a chair is. I've seen stranger things.

Also I didn't say it was moral, I said it was relative. We certainly do have concepts of badness that don't relate to morality.

 

[John K]

It seems to me that there are many issues with Christian morality from the perspective of a humanist committed to human freedom. I would be interested to know what your particular take on this is.

Ren,

My last comment was getting a bit long so I'll answer this question separately. There is inevitably going to be some areas of reciprocal conflict between a humanist and a Christian moral perspective, if only because the goals are different. If your boundaries are contained within a few decades of life on earth, and mine encompass eternity how could it be otherwise - I am going to be willing to sacrifice things in a way that you may possibly see as wrong in order to achieve the right eternal outcome for myself and others. There are aspects of humanist thinking though that must surely share a hint of this sort of perspective - eg how far is it reasonable to optimise the greatest good for the current generation if this sacrifices the well-being of people who live say 200 years from now? A human life is more valuable than any animal's life, but is an individual human life worth more than the extinction of an entire species of animal?

On a practical basis, I think both perspectives will have some moral values that are negotiable, and some that are not - regardless of what the leading lights say at any given moment. For example, I think that most types of Christianity will come to accept committed homosexual relationships eventually - and focus properly on the less-negotiable wrongs that plague any relationships such as spite, duplicity, taking people for granted, psychological abuse, physical assault, etc.

These issues take on more clarity when we think about the legal coercion of morals based on a particular perspective - but this is difficult. Do you sack doctors that refuse to carry out abortions in one part of the world, or in other parts of the world jail others who do. This is a bit medieval really. The best we can do here is to place our views before the people in a democracy and let them decide - my instinct is to put into effect the lowest common denominator morally oriented laws that we can and leave everything else to debate and individual conscience. This I suspect is pretty close to pragmatic humanism.

Just one other thought - we are very inward looking in the developed world. Christianity, including the Catholic Church, is growing at a great pace in Africa and elsewhere in the world, and these guys by no means share the humanist perspective that is so prevalent with us. Perhaps the same is happening with Islam. It may well be that the future lies more with their perspectives in the long run rather than Western secularism.

 

[wolly.green]

I think these are two different senses of "relative". Moral relativism is a kind of subjectivism.

Scientific improvements in the sense wolly means are probably objective insofar as things like medical progress etc. are objective improvements.

However I think it's a false equivalency on wolly's part to conflate moral improvement with scientific improvement. Will try to explain later.

Please do!

Improvement is predicated on the concept that the improved thing is better than the old thing, and "better" is dependent on distinguishing conscious desires, such as not wanting to be sick or not wanting to die. This is really an is-ought problem.

I disagree as well. But unlike @Ren, I'm going to explain this philosophically.

We know humans are fallible right? We are prone to error and vulnerable to mistakes! Which means our scientific theories are prone to error. What happens when we see a mistake? We can correct them right? We can see that there is a mistake and fix it! This is what progress is! Progress is what happens when we correct our mistakes!

Consider what a scientist does when trying to "explain" reality. They see a problem, conjecture multiple possible explanations, subject each of them to intense cycles criticism and refutation, then experimentally test the ones that survive criticism. If a theory fails to survive criticism and testing, it is not automatically rejected! What scienctists will do is identify the mistakes, correct them, and then subject those altered conjectures to further cycles of criticism and testing! This is the whole point of criticism, to find errors. If you fail to find mistakes, you are not doing science! You are doing pseudoscience.

When you say that progress is subjective, what you are really saying that it's impossible to correct mistakes! And further that it is impossible to discover truth in science!

 

[sprinkles]

When you say that progress is subject, what you are really saying that it's impossible to correct mistakes! And further that it is impossible to discover truth in science!

No, not really. People try to correct subjective mistakes all the time. Art is a good example of this. Also many of these mistakes you're talking about correcting used to be called truth, so when is truth really true?

 

[John K]

Please do!



I disagree as well. But unlike @Ren, I'm going to explain this philosophically.

We know humans are fallible right? We are prone to error and vulnerable to mistakes! Which means our scientific theories are prone to error. What happens when we see a mistake? We can correct them right? We can see that there is a mistake and fix it! This is what progress is! Progress is what happens when we correct our mistakes!

Consider what a scientist does when trying to "explain" reality. They see a problem, conjecture multiple possible explanations, subject each of them to intense cycles criticism and refutation, then experimentally test the ones that survive criticism. If a theory fails to survive criticism and testing, then it is not automatically rejected! What scienctists will do is identify the mistakes, correct them, and then subject those altered conjectures to cycles of criticism and testing once more! This is the whole point of criticism and testing. If you fail to find mistakes, you are not doing science! You are doing pseudoscience.

When you say that progress is subject, what you are really saying that it's impossible to correct mistakes! And further that it is impossible to discover truth in science!

Hi @wolly.green, I'm very interested in your perspective. What immediately comes to mind is the concept of Natural Law, which I think goes back to Greek philosophy and considers moral law as objective. While my own comments in this thread are from a religious perspective, which of course is closely aligned with the idea of a revealed natural law, I don't think this concept is at all unreasonable from an atheistic or agnostic perspective either. My feeling is that human beings are not just passengers floating like insubstantial froth, an aberration within an otherwise dead material world. We and our nature are as much part of the world as the matter, energy and the physical laws from which we and everything else are constructed, and we are perhaps the way in which the universe is becoming conscious of itself. I see no reason why on that basis there shouldn't be a moral code hard wired into the world in an analogous way to the laws of physics. But it seems to me it couldn't be exactly analogous - do you have any views on how the hypothesis - test cycle could be set up objectively to research on moral law? It seems to me much more difficult to make objective observations in response to moral hypotheses than it does for hard science. It may need us to encounter other civilisations elsewhere in the universe to really get to grips with this. Fascinating stuff ….

I'm sure @Ren will have views on Natural Law, which whether or not revealed has a strong flavour of transcendence about it …. probably second only to teleology in the philosophical disreputability stakes:notsoinnocent:

 

[wolly.green]

No, not really. People try to correct subjective mistakes all the time. Art is a good example of this. Also many of these mistakes you're talking about correcting used to be called truth, so when is truth really true?

Progress means to correct mistakes. What else could "better" mean? Also, there is not such thing absolute truth! So truth is knowledge we cannot find errors in. This doesn't mean we wont find errors in the future, and then cotrrec them.

 

[sprinkles]

Progress means to correct mistakes. What else could "better" mean? Also, there is not such thing absolute truth! So truth is knowledge we cannot find errors in. This doesn't mean we wont find errors in the future, and then cotrrec them.

What's the difference between what you think is a mistake and an actual mistake?

 

[sprinkles]

@John K
I would say that Natural Law arises... naturally where organisms coexist. A big difference that separates natural law from physical law is that physical law generally cannot be violated.

We are capable of doing only what the universe allows, and I think there is a reason we are able to go against natural law. Everything in this universe exists as a result of some prior thing being destroyed. We want to live and beat suffering and death, but suffering and death is also the reason we live.